The greatest design tool is customer service
Regardless of how powerful, persuasive, influential or informational your design is; it will mean nothing if you’ve ignored well designed customer service. I’ve been touting the concept of Business-Oriented-Design for a while now and customer service is very much apart of that larger idea. Whether you consider yourself a designer, developer or artist – you should be concerned with the business beyond the design; or rather the design of business. And that really starts and ends with customer service – assuming you’ve got a quality product.
You can expose your audience to hundreds of promotions, countless television commercials and dozens of other brand/product awareness initiatives. All that effort, regardless of how well designed, integrated, humorous or well executed could all be lost with just one bad customer experience. People rarely remember individual promotions or commercials – but they never forget a bad waiter, rude call center or impolite flight attendant.
Many of us tend to concentrate on design, either selling a product or making a product a useful – but we often forget the many aspects that go into a product or service that really make it successful. Some say our designs are only as strong as the marketer selling them and others say a good design will sell itself – neither is really ever true.
Whether you design websites, build banner ads or work with print – remember that there is life outside the design. You can’t always control it and you don’t usually work with it, but acknowledge the existence and importance of well designed customer service. Seek it out next time you are in a restaurant the same way your critique the menu design. Most people don’t even notice the small details that we spend countless hours perfecting. Most people will remember whether they liked a design or not, but won’t be able to recall the actual design itself. Your designs will do so much and be so powerful, but all your efforts can be lost to a bad customer experience.
- December 28th, 2006
- 4comments
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in my line of work, while it’s challenging to find quality design talent, it’s more challenging and requires more profound training and learning to find the kinds of people who we can even allow to attend a meeting where customers will be. customer service is too often considered a simple wage task — as if all you need is someone to monitor the phones. but there is more harm (and more success) to be found in the role of customer service for any given company than there is for the people behind the scenes. not that production, creativity, innovation, arent necessary. but you hit the nail on the head with, “All that effort, regardless of how well designed, integrated, humorous or well executed could all be lost with just one bad customer experience. People rarely remember individual promotions or commercials – but they never forget a bad waiter, rude call center or impolite flight attendant.”
people value interpersonal relationships above all else, even in business. great article.
I liked the statement “there is life outside the design”. It is very true. The design should only complement the website or product functionality.
Thanks for the comments guys!
I think you are right firsty — it is often hard to find design talent that is business-centric. Talent that really understands all of the elements that make a successful design — there is more to it than Photoshop.
Yeah Martin I agree about clients, hard to win wasy to lose.
Keep up the good work ! You might give me a comment on my new article Two Ambulance Lunch.
Cheers